Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as, for example, personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate. The various material layers are patterned using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
The semiconductor industry continues to improve integration density of various electronic components (e.g., transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.) by continual reductions in minimum feature size, which allow more components to be integrated into a given area.